Officials Try To Win Breaks In Japan

WASHINGTON — President Reagan has sent two senior officials to Japan to try to win trade concessions before Japan reorganizes its telecommunications industry, the White House said Saturday.

The reorganization, to take effect Monday, may limit foreigners` access to the Japanese market for communications equipment, American officials and business executives fear.

The Cabinet will meet early next week to discuss the talks; if they have been fruitless, top officials are expected to consider supporting legislation providing for trade reprisals against Japan.

The two officials, Lionel H. Olmer, undersecretary of commerce for international trade administration, and Dr. Gaston Sigur, a Japan specialist on the National Security Council, went to Tokyo Friday night.

Sigur, former head of George Washington University`s Asian Studies Center, was described by a White House official as a close personal friend of Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone. He is carrying a message from Reagan.

Nakasone, reacting to a U.S. Senate resolution Thursday urging the administration to curb Japanese imports unless Japan opens its markets, said Japan ``must recognize the seriousness of such a resolution and adopt measures accordingly,`` The Associated Press reported from Tokyo.

``It is the first time for the U.S. Senate to adopt a unanimous resolution asking us for restraint,`` Nakasone said in a television interview with the Tokyo Broadcasting System that is to be broadcast today.

The purpose of the trip by the two envoys is ``to intensify our negotiations on telecommunications,`` according to Marlin Fitzwater, a White House spokesman. ``There will be a discussion of general trade issues as well as trade attitudes in this country,`` he said.

Japan`s telecommunications law, which becomes effective Monday, is of critical importance to the United States because it will, among other things, govern the access of foreign companies to the huge Japanese market. The law makes rules governing who will be able to sell equipment in Japan, equipment testing and certification procedures after the Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Public Corp., the government`s telecommunications monopoly, is denationalized.

Olmer has already told the Senate Commerce Committee chairman, John C. Danforth, R-Mo., that the administration would like to work with him in shaping a telecommunications ``reciprocity`` bill, the officials said.

Legislation now being drafted by the Senate panel would in effect bar Japanese telecommunications products from the United States until Tokyo takes bolder steps to let foreigners sell such products in Japan.